


i (you) need (left) you (me)

by postfixrevolution



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Introspection, delusions and projections and imagination and sorry not sorry, mainly fitz-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 19:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3180455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz doesn't know what the empty feeling eating him alive is, but he also knows that he <i>can't</i> be falling apart if Jemma is beside him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i (you) need (left) you (me)

Fitz springs up from his hospital bed, breathing heavily. He wipes a cold sweat off his brow before leaning back against the headboard, waiting for his breathing to slow. _Bad dream_ , he thinks. No, worse than a bad dream. Bad dreams don't scream and sob and drown you in icy, salty tears. Thinking about it makes him shiver and shake. _What's the name for it again?_

He voices the question aloud to Simmons. She doesn't answer. A glance to his side reveals her gone from her position sleeping in that green armchair beside him. Fitz nearly stops breathing. There's the sound of light footsteps slowly growing louder, and then a soft thump of flesh falling against wood. 

She leans on the doorframe, the dim light of the exit sign above her creating a glowing circle around her head. There was a name for it, but Fitz decides he'll remember later. She has a small smile on her face and she could easily be like an angel. He breathes easy again. 

"Is the word you're looking for nightmare?" she asks softly, and he breathes a sigh of relief as he collapses back into his pillow. Simmons sits soundlessly beside him in the same green armchair she fell asleep in earlier. He doesn't really wonder where she went; all that matters is that she is back. 

"Yeah, a nightmare," he confirms. "It was really bad. Scary. Better now, though. You're here." He doesn't say how her presence makes him feel secure, warm, _safe_ — only because the words don't occur to him at the moment. Fitz would have said it if he had thought of the words. But, he is sure she knows what he means anyway because _she's here_. Simmons is here. 

She's always here at the exact right times. He quickly falls back asleep. 

* * *

The doctors told him earlier, but they tell him again now, when he isn't hooked up to an IV or confined to a hospital bed. Something about that hospital bed was gross and hard and not good for lying on. He can't ask Simmons for the word right now because the doctors are speaking, but he'll ask later. Apparently that happens now — not remembering words and stuff — but Fitz is completely well enough to be out of the hospital now. That's good. 

They tell him a lot of things about what happened to him. Biology and anatomy were never his strongest suits, but hearing and understanding what they say is thankfully easier than trying to find the words himself. He understands oxygen deprivation and brain damage, cognitive repercussions and front and back lobes, and he tries to put the pieces together in his head. 

It can't be that bad, he thinks, not when he is sure he can feel the ideas still _something_ around in his mind. He can't remember that word right now, either, but he thinks it might start with a B. Or was it an S? He'll ask Simmons. 

Speaking of Simmons, she is standing right beside him. The doctors didn't even say anything about her staying or leaving when they sat Fiz down to talk about his condition and what he should do to stay alert and on top of things now that he was discharged. 

"If you're ever curious about anything, leave us a message." Fitz thinks he recognizes one of the doctors. Maybe he treated May or Skye once. Those two are always getting hurt doing agent things. Maybe he could try agent things now. He can't remember exactly why he hated the thought before. "You know you've got a good team behind you, don't you? Don't be afraid to rely on them sometimes, too." 

He nods to the doctors. "I know," he replies politely. "And I have Simmons, don't I?" Her hand on his shoulder is nice and he places his on top of it warmly. The two doctors exchange quick looks, and Fitz can't tell what that means. He pays it no mind. 

"Of course," the other doctor agrees, smiling nicely. _Nicely,_ Fitz rolls around in his head. He doesn't feel like the word fits the man's smile, but nothing else does. Fitz smiles nicely back. 

"Thank you," he tells the doctors. He turns around to see Simmons smiling at him. Her smile is nice, too, and the word nice fits it perfectly. It's bright, too, like it always is. He wishes he could find a prettier word to describe it, but he just puts it on his list for later. As he and Simmons exit the room, Fitz swears he had another word or something on his list. Nothing comes to mind, so he just drops it. Simmons falls so into step beside him that the sound of her footsteps almost disappears. 

* * *

Fitz walks into the lab after a long time. He doesn't know how long, but it was probably long because walking in again feels like a _thing_ of _something_ air. He doesn't need the words really, not when he can feel memories in his head dancing and spinning around like... maybe planets around the sun. The comparison doesn't feel right, but it works. He makes for his worktable. 

It's hard to exactly remember the names of the tools that are neatly organized over the surface, but he looks at them and remembers something. He looks at the handheld metal stick-type thing and remembers burnt fingertips. Simmons would roll her eyes every time he did that, but she'd help put bandages on them and give him a cup of something warm and sweet that he can't remember the name of as she treats them. 

That thing over there — the silvery-gun type thing — was something he built. He had a cool name for it, too. Two names, actually, but Fitz liked one of them more than the other. There was one time a black haired man told him he didn't like the name. The memory is fuzzy, but Fitz is sure he ended up using the gun anyway, so it didn't matter. The man's face isn't clear yet, but he drops the thought as a heaviness in the back of his mind begins to grow. They could be related — that heaviness and that man — but Fitz quickly looks away from the gun and the feeling disappears. 

Finally, Fitz sets his eyes on the stool by the lab table. He sat in it all the time, working on whatever it was he did. It was a lot of things. He can't remember exactly, but it was a lot of things. Bits of shiny metal with weird marks on them, vaccines that weren't vaccines but something else, and gross dead things that Simmons loved. 

He turns to Simmons and tells her he remembers when she dissected that one thing and he almost threw up. She smiles and laughs softly, telling him she remembers that, too. He nods with his own smile, if only grinning because he managed to make her laugh. Her laugh is a sound he's sure he'll never forget. 

Sitting down in his stool, Fitz picks up a random object — a small cartridge luminescing a deep blue. He remembers the sound of gunshots deep into the borders of Russia, barking, and cold. A frown pulls down at his lips. _Ward_ , Fitz realizes and remembers at the same time. He feels his heart hurt. 

"Maybe I should've done it," he mumbles to Simmons sadly. He turns the cartridge over in his hands, grabbing a gun and pushing it in. 

"Done what?" she asks, placing a light hand on his back. 

"Made it an ounce lighter." 

Simmons doesn't reply, and not for the first time since he's woken up, Fitz can't find the right word to describe the heavy feeling in his stomach and the way his heart wants to cry. She doesn't supply it and he doesn't make a mental note to ask. 

* * *

His hands are shaky. Have they always been this shaky? They couldn't have been, but they are. Simmons' hand on his shoulder is feather-light, almost not there. He wants to use a different word in place of not there, but he doesn't feel like asking for it right now. Not to her, who's as _there_ for him as no one else has been since he's returned. They're busy; he gets it, but it doesn't make him miss the team meetings in a cramped airbus conference room any less. Either way, her almost-not-there touch doesn't help. 

Fitz hisses as he burns his fingers and puts his soldering iron down. Simmons has reminded him of the name twice so far. The memories of sweet drinks and bandages remain just that, and for some reason, she never makes him sweet drinks or even those perfectly bitter drinks anymore. She gives form to the thoughts he cannot finish, rests her too-light hands on his shoulder to comfort and reassure him what he only hopes to be true, but somehow it's not the same as shared drinks and dissected things, biology talks and complete silence as he knows she's sitting beside him while they both work. 

It's like: Fitz wants to believe Simmons. He's sure there's a better word for it, but she is his _everything_. She's the words at the end of the sentences he starts but can't finish, the reassurance that he's not just the broken half of a broken set kept only for the sake of having both. He sees Skye look at him sometimes — she's so beautiful now, strong and steadfast, not that she wasn't before — and it's a sad look. He doesn't think there's even a word for it; just the sad brown eyes that look at him and Simmons that never stop being sad. He knows she's never looked at them like that before just like he knows this terrible feeling of wanting to yell at the girl — to _drop it_ , to _stop it_ , to _leave him be_ — has never attacked him before, either. 

He doesn't yell at Skye, though. It's not something he'd probably do, so he refrains for normalcy's sake. Simmons just tells him the agent is _concerned_ with so much conviction Fitz doesn't know why he wants to throw up at the word, but he nods and stores the word away and ignores Skye's ochre eyes all the same. Somehow, Jemma doesn't believe him when he nods to her anymore. He has no idea why. 

* * *

He commits the feeling of the freshly printed paper to memory. Attaches words to it. Smooth. Dry. Clean whites and clean blacks. It's completely flawless. The warmth from the printer quickly goes away. It's completely flawless and completely dead. 

Fitz stole these papers. He walked into the lab one day and the computer was open to a diagram of a plane. It had panels all over it. Camouflage. It was supposed to be his project so he took it. They're never looking for him to see, anyway. 

The paper slides underneath his fingers like water, if water was dry. He tells himself that makes sense, and tries to make sense of the lines across the surface. There's a cacophony in his head shaped vaguely like angled mirrors and motorized panes, and he's in it, scribbling furiously across it. Adjoining lines. Messy suggestions. 

He pauses over one part of the plane. It's important, but only the restless tap of his pen tip against the table fills the space where its name should be. Jemma is sitting across the table, far enough for his hand to reach hers, close enough so he can't feel her warmth beside him. She traces the part delicately with her finger. 

"Oh, that? It's the —" 

"Writing notes on the plane's wing mounted photovoltaics, huh Fitz?" 

Agent Triplett's voice is loud as he cuts Jemma off, and Fitz jumps up a foot as the man _somethings_ next to him. The scared rabbit running in his chest fills the blank where that word should be. He could be offended at the interruption of his conversation, but his blood is too loud for that. The man chuckles, a low and friendly sound. Fitz still feels his breaths, fast. 

"Didn't mean to startle you there," Triplett apologizes. "Just saw you hunched over all concentrated and was curious what had you so engrossed." 

Fitz blinks, grabbing for a response. He sticks to shaking his head and muttering some sounds that sound like _no_ 's and _not really_ 's. 

"Why hide it? Looks like you've got a good start here, if you ask me." 

Fitz remains speechless. Jemma raises an eyebrow at him. 

"Well?" she asks softly. "Aren't you going thank h—" 

"Oh, but don't let me stop you! Keep up the good work." 

Fitz nods, maybe, blankly, and Triplett is gone as quick as he came. He stares at Jemma. She's still sentence half finished, mouth half open, and when Fitz's face falls into a frown, looking like he's ready to say something rude about Agent Triplett, she stops him. Jemma just gives him this unhappy, unsad not-smile and his words turn dead as the paper under his fingers. 

His blood turns heavy — like old friends on his tongue, old wings above clouds — and he can't move. He doesn't move. The pencil rolls out of his hand, dropping with a noise as loud as _loud_ , and Fitz knows it's her unsmile; it makes him feel like she, like they, like _he_ can't do anything. 

* * *

Fitz springs up from his almost-nice bed, not breathing. He's covered in an ocean that feels like a cold sweat, a cold sweat that feels like an _ocean_. His heart expands and contracts and lodges in his throat — all at the same time — and he's _drowning_. 

It's not until he can feel it in his head — this almost real knife cutting it right down the center — does air flood into his lungs and he leans against the grey wall, wiping wetness off his face. It's salty and all he wishes is that it isn't. 

He knows the word now. Nightmare. It's hard to have so many — so many of these knives crushing him and oceans and cutting him — and not know the name. It's the first word he hasn't had to ask for in a long time. He's not proud of that fact. 

The air he fills his lungs with is plain. He doesn't know how it is not like sea air, but he knows it's not no air, so he sticks with plain. There's a word for the grossly clean feeling it leaves in his mouth, and he turns to ask Jemma what it is. 

She's sleeping right next to him, on an armchair with a book resting on her lap. Fitz wonders if she finished it. If it was interesting. While waiting for her to answer, he gazes patiently at her book. The cover is also plain, not like the air, but just a simple two-tone thing. There's no book jacket, which is a shame because Jemma always loved the art on the front. She said they were these _things_ that took you magically from this world into the book. All Fitz remembers of the word was that it was pretty coming out of her mouth. Musical. Magical. 

Maybe she didn't finish the book, he muses. What a funny thing to think. That's maybe why she's sleeping. Without anything to enter through, where would there be to go? It's such a plain cover, black and white and bathed in shadows. Fitz almost wants to go inside, too. 

"Jemma, wake up," he whispers, gently trying to wake her. "Did you finish your book?" 

She doesn't shift, only continuing to breathe noiselessly with her head on her hand and her book in her lap. Fitz can't stop looking at the book, trying to remember if she'd told him what it was about before. He'd surely asked at one point, maybe. 

"Jemma," he repeats, and he thinks the word falls from his mouth like a swallow off a beam. He doesn't quite know what that means, but it sounds poetic and he imagines free falling. "What was the word you always used? To tell me about the book jackets." 

Carefully, he extends a hand, shakes her shoulder. She's a little cold. Maybe he should give her his blanket. He unwraps himself from his blanket as he talks. It's less cold when he talks. 

"You used it to jump into books," he reminds her. "Said it was like magic." 

Fitz throws the blanket around her shoulders. 

"I think we both laughed at that." 

The book falls off her lap. With a murmured apology, Fitz reaches down to pick it up. It's open straight down the middle and he feels an almost-but-not pain in his head. He doesn't close the book as he picks it up, muttering to himself — " _What was that word?_ " 

Fitz stares at blank pages. It's cold. Jemma doesn't respond. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this half finished in my documents for the longest time, and figured, what better time to pound the entire thing out and publish than right before my finals? 
> 
> I always imagined Fitz not fully realizing Simmons was gone right away, kind of telling himself she never left until it became undeniable... Hopefully, I was able to capture that well here, and comments and thoughts are always appreciated!


End file.
